Professional Biography
Sangyoo Lee is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Center for Benefit-Cost Studies of Education (CBCSE) at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. Dr. Lee received her Ph.D. in Public Affairs-Public Policy in the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota in 2021. She was also a Demography Predoctoral Trainee at the Minnesota Population Center from 2017-2020.
Prior to joining Penn GSE, she worked at the Human Capital Research Collaborative (HCRC) as a graduate student researcher assisting in implementing and evaluating an early childhood intervention program, the Child-Parent Center (CPC) program, which is targeted towards socio-economically disadvantaged children in urban school districts.
Her dissertation work involved using nationally representative data sets in examining how academic trajectories begin and persist for immigrant children in the United States by combining the immigration literature with early childhood longitudinal data analysis. She examined the persistence of the immigrant paradox and investigated the role of parental migration selectivity in early childhood investment behaviors and educational outcomes. In addition, she examined the challenges in scaling up a proven early childhood education intervention program and discussed the importance of measuring implementation fidelity in evaluating scaled-up intervention studies.
Dr. Lee’s primary research interests are in the effects of early childhood intervention on children's educational outcomes and adult well-being, and in the application of this research to public policies. She is particularly interested in immigrant children, looking at disparities of educational outcomes and long-term economic well-being.
As a postdoctoral researcher, she is involved in a cost-effectiveness study of an early childhood intervention program targeted towards refugee children in the Middle East and South Asia. In addition, using the state longitudinal data system, she is examining how early life conditions from birth to age 5 have an impact on later educational outcomes.
